It Started With A Kiss
by mercurial2010
Summary: Told in two interwoven parts. Callum and George have become very close over their last traumatic events, it's almost like they're the only ones who really know each other. WIP. I seem to be being a bit experimental here, a
1. Chapter 1

I seem to be being a bit experimental here, are there no other George/Callum fics out there? There is crazy chemistry between the two actors, I can't be the only person watching this surely? I know there's some Callum/Maddy people out there and I really don't mind her so I have tried to respect her in this. But hey it is still about her current boyfriend and best friend getting it on – because damn it they really should! So if you're a Maddy-nut I don't think you'd like this a lot – you've been warned.

Also my characterisation is prob a little off, first fic for either of them, so please pass me any tips.

Starts with current (future) day, intersliced with flashbacks of when the story diverges from canon, being the start of that stuff of Ash in her comma :*(.

Warnings for graphic slash sex, and later chapter mentionings of all those crazy ('did they just show that before the watershed?') Stuff that happened to George.

Happy reading :-)

XX G&C XX

12/06/2012

Callum's fingers loose themselves in between short soft tufts of brown hair. His mind rushing with uncompleted half-formed thoughts - things he wishes he could breathe life to but he knows that if he tried they would only come out wrong, because no-one has ever taught him this. No one has ever taught him how to be honest and open and tell one person everything and nothing and just know that they know you. No one has ever taught him that it's OK to be everything he is, and admit fragility and vulnerability and that he's just keeping his head above water.

But a familiar grin pulls his gaze down from the well-traced patterns in his ceiling. Blue eyes lock and study like they can get past skin, and psyche and defences and just know – the way that no-one else as ever known.

29/03/2012

He remembered clearly all the emotions that rattled around his unsaid words that day in the hospital. How he had gone home and slammed the bedroom door shut because the world would be silent if he couldn't see that his mum was drunk, and his baby sister was crying, and his older sister, his best mate, was hanging on to life like she could just disappear, and all at the time that he was so very, very, useless. But of course the one thing he could never do was get away from himself, and being home meant that he was left alone with his ineptness, his sheer futility and the only difference was that the thoughts were louder now in his silence. But just as he thought he couldn't take anymore _he_ had come in, George had arrived, and Callum had thought he'd scream if one word of sympathy or condolence was whispered - but it wasn't. George had simply sat, breathed a deep breath and filled the room with inane chatter about school and friendships and fashion. It had taken George one moment, a fraction of a second, to realise what Callum needed. He had just known that what he needed more than anything at that moment was not to be left alone in his silence.

12/06 -

George had a way of doing that, Callum realises. Of just looking and knowing exactly what he needs. Like now when he can't help but struggle out the strangled voice of warning; and George just looks up and smiles. His fingers interweave around his outstretched hand, the mere touch grounding. As his touch trails lower.

29/03-

That night the stillness of the stars left them lying parallel sharing their silence. Neither wanted to move and both knew there was no need for words. Callum had felt safe, comforted. For the first time in his entire life he felt understood by someone other than his sister. He felt that he could show all he was. Expose all the shaded, damaged, broken parts of himself and that there would be no judgement and no torturing silence and no fixing. That George would just understand. So in the darkness of their room, in the safety of his presence, he had let the first tears he could remember fall.

Then George had shifted and Callum had panicked - he had not been strong, he had let his body take over, he had failed. Tears were failure and now George would leave. But George didn't leave. He had simply placed an arm around him, comforted him with warmth and told him wordlessly that it was OK to cry.

12/06 -

George's arm runs from the top of his hip, across his rapidly flexing abs and rests just above his heart. Callum knows his heart is beating out of control, that he is weak to his body's impulse. More than anything he knows that George can feel that. He knows George can feel that right at this moment he is nothing but a pattern of firing neurons and answering nerve endings, dissolved to the simplest of blood and muscle and senses. But he's OK with that, he realises, as a flick of a hand draws a long licentious moan from his lips. More than that he wants George to know, he wants him to know that he can feel him, that he is lost in this. He tosses into a pillow of senses that he's come to know by heart, of sandalwood and allspice, and he keens because he is lost in a maelstrom of him, and there is nowhere else that he would rather be.

29/03 -

Eventually the tears subsided as silently as they started but George didn't move. The loop of his arm told Callum more than a million words ever could. The touch told Callum that it was OK to be weak, to be vulnerable, to break; and that after he shattered everything would still be OK. With a single lasting embrace George helped him dust off each broken part and build back together again. And he slowly came back to himself, back to the moment, back to them, there, lying together on the bed.

There were scents, masculine, protecting, enveloping scents that surrounded his very being. And Callum started to notice the rushing of his heart. He was aware his body was reacting.

He knew he was slipping so he painted a picture of a beautiful blonde as his precipice. But George shifted up, bent on an arm to create eye contact. And inside the soothing, caring, knowing blue world Callum lost the picture of that girl. All he could see were those blue eyes and that smile. All that existed in every pore was George.

12/06 –

The first touch of those lips against his heated desperate body is enough to have his hips jerking forward, his body in the position of passion that has only had one owner. His eyes map the contours of the person sitting before him in his bed. Smooth skin lit by the moon and the trail of hours of slow desire. Lips and eyes set in a smile of triumph.

He is once again taken by his beauty. A beauty that he had barely realised as they clung to survival together. No, it had dawned on him slowly in the awakening of Spring. It started with a kiss.

29/03 –

He pressed his palm against a warm cheek. He'd meant to thank him, he'd meant for words of gratitude to form from his lips. Afterward he would recall that, before the kiss, he hadn't planned or even expected it. But then he'd remember there was something about those lips, the way they looked in the moonlight and he'd know that wasn't quite true.

All it was was a brief touch of lip on lip, a passing shared inhale. And then there was the moment that the choice had to be made, to laugh it off or to dive into it, and George had been the one to take it. There had been one word to break the silence that night, one word to bring the cold rush of guilt. It was whispered from George's lips.

"Maddy".

XX G&C XX

A/N: Thank you for reading the first chapter. Hope it made sense and the boys seemed like themselves. Please leave a little comment, anything like "George/Callum – you're totally crazy"; or "actually your characterisations a little off Callum's a total cry baby" will be highly appreciated.

Oh and if anyone knows of any other George/Callum fandom stuff please let me know! :-)

One or two more chapters to come depending on how people respond.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

A/N: Thank you so much for all the awesome reviews, I really did think I was the only one who could see this going on!

After some really great feedback from Emily-pino I've changed the style a little bit so hopefully this chapter's a little easier to follow, less randomly arty! But let me know which you like more.

This chapter's is all about the George and for some reason, despite his sunny-front, I find explaining his head more angsty so this is *very*angsty – sorry about that. Next chapter things progress more so please stick with me

Warnings - this chapter for smutty mentionings and a lot of angst!

XXXXG&CXXXX

12/05/2012

Sighs and moans bounce from walls caused by his lips. The loop of that voice saying his name in that way is driving lust through every cell. He is more in this moment than he has ever been in any other. His senses dwelling in the place where everything is Callum. And then music fills the four walls, a ringtone meant for only one. He can feel muscles lock beneath his tensing mouth, two hearts frozen for a beat of time. And then he feels the breath of remembrance that flows from the man in front of him, the sound of guilt fleeing, and he wishes it could be that simple for him.

A hand offered in comfort sweeps through his hair, but he can barely move.

"Maddie." George announces. "I thought you'd changed her ringtone."

XXXXG&CXXXX

29/03/2012

In the moments leading up to the kiss George was right where he should have been. He was supporting the man who was more than his friend, was closer than the best friend he ever had. He was helping this family, which was like his family, rebuild from their shattered foundations. He was letting Callum grief, admit defeat to mortality, the way he had had to that first week on the street. He knew that in that at least Callum would find some relief.

Callum's deep inner sobs subsided and George had prepared to tell him that tears were all very well and of course he would be there to catch all he had, but soon Ash would get better and no more would fall. But when he bent to look at the man beside him, Callum's eyes had been a shade he had never seen before. They had been the essence of pure fire, something flickering within their depths that he was all too naive to realise.

The touch of a warm calloused hand on his cheek sent his nerve endings pulsing and his mind was erased of everything but the mixed up tangled ball of his feelings for Callum. Callum Kane. His friend, his best friends' boyfriend, his saviour, the person he had grown to depend on, his crush, the man he had had those dreams about.

Callum leant slowly towards him. His torso shifting closer as he did so, so George could feel the movement of toned muscles beneath cotton. As George recalls the fleeting moment it is paused in slow motion and he can sense every beat of his heart, every prick of his skin and every inhale of _Callum_. In that moment, with the air heavy around their aligning bodies, George came to see Callum as nothing but the man he longed for.

The kiss had been leisurely, a slow instinctive parting of lips, and a sweet shared breath. He could feel the contours and valleys of Callum's mouth against him, the feel of his moustache like pins and needles of fire.

In reality the moment lasted no more than a couple of seconds. But with that one kiss George knew the place where he fit perfectly was disolved by his hands into blame and deceit. With that one moment of desirous passion he had entered a place he never should have been, rebounding with feelings that were not his to discover or explore. He was breaking his best friend's heart and worse he was ruining "his family". In that moment he was the one place in the world he shouldn't have been.

On desperate feet, with a pulsing heart, he hurried out of the room. On his lips the name that he knew would prevent Callum from calling him back.

He locked himself in the bathroom, his breath heavy and fast. In the shower he faced towards the head. He let the cool water rush over the burn of his lips and attempt to chill the fire that was breathed into them.

He closed his eyes and he could clearly see the man Callum was when they first met - The mysterious enigmatic stranger. At college, acting the person he wanted to be, George was a teenager lost in the world where people had crushes, where that was normal and right. And Callum was the person to make him crush. George would stand in the corridor using every sense to investigate the stranger that was Callum, and joke how he always had a thing for Heathcliff. He could still feel the hundred nervous butterflies that flitted in a small tight cage in his stomach as he realised they were speech partners.

But then Callum stopped being a stranger. He became the man who had followed him, discovered him, fought for him, and saved him. He became the man who had forgone the comfort of a home to lay beside him in a squat. And when George was lost in that place of nightmares Callum had been the one to search for him. For months Callum had walked along George's dangerous road and he'd supported him with every petrifying step.

That was over.

That night, as George washed and dried himself with comforts that were only his because of Callum, he had felt certain that that stupid kiss would change all of that. That whether it was that night, or the following morning, Callum would ask him to leave.

He sat for lasting moments on the bathroom floor with his head in his hands. He couldn't decide what would be worse - an angry Callum collecting his stuff and telling him to leave; or a guilty Callum, pacing the floor fretfully wondering aloud whether he should tell Maddie now or in the morning. So, it was with a deep breath he pushed the bedroom door open carefully.

But as he stepped into the moonlit bedroom all he saw was a man that was a broken fraction of himself. Callum was laying curled into fretful dreams above the duvet, his face shoved into his pillow. And George had understood what the kiss had meant, and what it hadn't.

With care he climbed onto the bed and folded the duvet to protect Callum from the cold of the night. He placed it gently over him as he realised that in that prior moment Callum had clung onto anything he could find to keep himself afloat. The kiss had only been a way of feeling something other than pain, nothing but that.

For days to come George could feel the sigh of relief that filled his lungs that night as he realised that kiss meant nothing but a request for comfort, that it hadn't meant that anything had to change. He could feel that breath of relief until the moment he saw Callum's eyes shine like that again.

XXXX G&C XXXX

12/05/2012

"Maddie." George announces. "I thought you'd changed her ringtone."

"I'm sorry." Callum breathes, as George shifts away from him to the tune of that girl's ringtone.

George's head shakes sadly, he knows Callum's apologising for more than just the assignment of tones on his Samsung. He knows he's apologising, yet again, for things he can't control. Like leading them along the road to this place where the girl had forgiven her ex but not her best friend. How the rumours were still milling. How the whisperers were still lamenting the loss of the perfect pair, the beauty and the fashionister, and wondering whether things would ever be rectified. Earlier at college, as George attempted to keep out of the way of people that he used to consider friends, he walked past a couple of girls he didn't even know he knew and heard them saying it was such a shame that it all had to end because of lust.

XXXX G&C XXXX

A/N: Thank you so much for getting through another chapter, please let me know what you think, reviews really are love and motivation!


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